The Truth of Being Indestructible
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: It's been months since a Mysteron attack, but a series of sabotages is taking place in important places where the Mysterons could possibly be attacking. Dispatched to one such location, Captains Blue and Scarlet guard against sabotage...and they get talking, and suddenly Captain Blue learns some home truths about his best friend and partner. Rated T for swearing.
1. Chapter 1

I have always loved Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. I watched it when I was a kid, and I loved the action in it, and now I have a copy of it on DVD.

Thank the lord.

Anyway, I was watching the series, and I wondered how Captain Scarlet feels and I came up with this. Enjoy, and please leave some feedback.

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The Truth of Being Indestructible.

When he had first been recruited into Spectrum when it had first been formed, Adam Svenson, now known by his codename 'Captain Blue,' had never been one hundred per cent sure of what his new line of work would take him. There were dozens of police and security organisations around the world, from the regular police and army services to the World Aquanaut Security Patrol, but sometimes when Spectrum was still being founded with lists of criteria detailing what their work would entail, he imagined they were making it up as they went along to make Spectrum an organisation that provided a diverse array of tasks.

In a sense Spectrum was as diverse as International Rescue; he knew that despite making it abundantly clear they were a rescue operation, they would sometimes willingly bend that rule, provided it saved lives.

The only reason he was thinking about that was when he had joined up with Spectrum, he had never imagined once he would be forced to walk around one of the major monorail hubs in case of a Mysteron attack.

Thinking about the Mysterons did nothing but anger Captain Blue. As a member of Spectrum who was on the frontline along with his friend and partner Captain Scarlet, he had witnessed some of the atrocities the Mysterons had committed in the name of their war of vengeance against Earth for the destruction of their precious complex on Mars.

So many innocent people dead because of them, and people who hadn't even been involved in the Zero X mission to Mars, the second Martian expedition to take place after that disaster a few years ago, where the first Zero X mission came under attack because they had destroyed a life form on the surface of Mars without even realising it was a life form in the first place, so it was understandable that the next expedition would be crewed by more nervous people.

Captain Blue sometimes wondered if they got further out into space, and they encountered an alien life form on some distant world if they would repeat Captain Black's mistake of shoot first, ask questions about the consequences later. Assuming they didn't defeat the Mysterons in such a way the mysterious aliens could not continue their war of nerves, or if they actually succeeded in wiping out all life on Earth, that was.

But he had something else on his mind, what were the Mysterons doing? It had been eight months since their attack on President Roberts (the ship, not the person), and there hadn't been a peep from them. But he knew better than to expect the Mysterons to just decide to stop their war of nerves against Earth.

The Mysterons had played this little game before. They would carry out a nasty attack, and then they would stop for a while, almost as if they were either strategising or taking a break, but it was believed by Spectrum analysts the Mysterons were simply choosing fresh targets. Either way, they were experts in psychological warfare. It was hard to equate a supposed peaceful race as the Mysterons had described themselves when they made contact with the expedition because nothing they had done had proven to Captain Blue they were peaceful.

Many in Spectrum welcomed the chance to have a break, but they knew it would not last. Sooner or later the Mysterons would be back, and that mysterious booming voice which came over the radios and telephones would blare out with a new threat, but what he was most curious about was why they announced their plans in such a brazen manner. It was almost as though the Mysterons set up their attacks as a means of discovering human weaknesses, but until they could see what happened then they would never find out.

Recently there had been a spate of murders and acts of sabotage, usually in the industrial and transport sectors, but while many doubted it to be the work of the Mysterons, Spectrum had to investigate.

Captain Blue looked around the darkened monorail terminals, his hands around the handles of the camera like the Mysteron detector, taking pictures of the machinery to see if they had been altered by the Mysterons' strange matter/energy techniques, but they were normal.

Captain Scarlet approached him, in his hands was another detector; Captain Blue was delighted the technology existed ever since it was discovered during that mess with General Tiempo, though he wished they had learnt X-rays did not penetrate Mysterons or Mysteron constructs, it would have saved dozens of lives.

"Anything?" Captain Scarlet asked.

"Nothing so far," Captain Blue replied, trying to hide his boredom. He had been on duty for seven hours already, and he had been on his feet for four, and he was tired.

"Same here," Captain Scarlet looked around, his usual alert, disciplined and diligent manner faded slightly. "Come on, let's take a break," he said and he led the way to a staffroom. Captain Blue followed him, noting the exhaustion on his face.

The staffroom was just that, a spartan room with an awful carpet, too bright walls thanks to its lightning which was reflected off of the white-painted walls. Captain Scarlet flinched a little at the decor and harsh lighting, and he wished he could turn down the lights a touch, but it was either this or sit in darkness.

After grabbing some drinks from the machine, Blue and Scarlet both sat in companionable silence.

"Do you want to tell the Colonel we've found nothing?" Blue asked.

"No. I was thinking we take a break for a bit before we report anything," Scarlet replied.

Blue nodded. "Do you think the Mysterons will attack here?"

"Anything is possible, knowing them. This hub is one of the more busiest and well-connected ones; if it is damaged then it would cripple the transportation network," Scarlet replied while taking a sip from his tea and grimacing at the taste. "I prefer the real stuff," he commented putting the cup down.

Blue looked down into his own cup and wondered if his own would taste alright.

"I don't know what to think, Adam," Scarlet went on, "but ever since that mess with the President Roberts, we haven't heard anything from them. When they go to ground, I worry."

Despite wishing that Captain Scarlet hadn't admitted that, Captain Blue noted the use of his first name, and decided to drop his own Spectrum rank; technically they were on duty, but truthfully he didn't care since this was not Cloudbase, and besides it wasn't expected of Spectrum officers of the colour branch to stick to their codenames on cases like this.

But he winced when he was reminded on the last Mysteron case.

He could still remember the stench of burnt flesh that had flooded the sickbay and kept everyone but Doctor Fawn and his assistants out while the Cloudbase air conditioning system struggled to cope after they had managed to get Paul's burnt wreck of a body back to base, and he remembered wondering something that had occasionally crossed his mind but never seemed to turn up in casual conversation.

"Paul," Adam began hesitantly, "do you mind if I ask you something?"

Paul looked at him quizzically. "Sure, ask me anything," he said, happy that they were moving on with the conversation onto what he believed would be more friendly ground that didn't involve talk about the Mysterons.

"We've never talked about it. In fact, you go out of your way to avoid talking about it."

Paul stiffened as he began to have a good idea where Captain Blue was going with this, but he remained silent as he waited for his friend to get to the point.

"How do you feel about being indestructible?"

Paul licked his lips guardedly, his expression grim. "Why do you want to know?" he asked quietly.

"Because I'm curious, and because you don't seem interested in talking about it whenever someone brings it up."

"No one seems to care."

"Perhaps, but I do. Well, how do you feel about it?" Adam repeated his question.

There, he had gotten it all out, but Adam wondered if Paul would actually answer his question. For a while, Paul didn't reply, and he looked down into his cup of tea.

While he sat in his seat, watched by a hesitantly waiting Captain Blue, no Adam, Captain Scarlet thought about the subject and his reasons for not wanting to talk about it though he was surprised by the way his friend had basically told him that it had never come up in a civilised or casual conversation but had he really given the impression he didn't want to talk about it? Yes, he had, he realised.

Finally, he sighed under his breath and took another drink of tea - he wished he could forego Spectrum regulations not to drink alcohol on duty, but if he had some brandy then he could fortify the tea and make it more palatable - and looked at Captain Blue seriously.

"Do you remember when it all started, when my Mysteron counterpart took the World President hostage at gunpoint?" Paul asked.

"Of course," Adam replied, remembering that terrible time. It had been during the early days of the Mysteron's war of nerves when they still didn't fully understand the Mysterons or their powers. The Zero X expedition members, well the ones who had gotten out whereas Captain Black had vanished out of sight, had described the way the complex had been reconstructed. They had just made their threat of destroying all life of Earth slowly and gradually after Captain Black's Zero X mission to Mars, and they had gotten itchy trigger fingers and destroyed that complex on the planet.

Adam sometimes wondered if the Mysterons were even aware of the original Zero X mission to Mars, how the astronauts inside had arrived on Mars and had completely different ideas of what life was before they encountered those rock snake things. Like everyone else back on Earth, the astronauts had no way of knowing that the weird coils of rock they shooting were actually living beings that were capable of firing blasts from their mouths until it was too late, and the first Rock snake that uncoiled began the attack that resulted in them cutting their mission of exploration short.

He would have been truly surprised if the Mysterons hadn't known about the incident, but they'd probably never know. But seriously, if they had known, then surely they wouldn't have pointed those devices Captain Black and the others had taken for weapons of some kind.

"Well, I still don't have any memory of what happened during the time Captain Brown and myself were thrown off the road, and waking up after it all happened," Paul went on even if Adam already knew about this detail, but he had come to realise that Paul didn't want to remember since it had been told in such vivid detail. "All I remember is the car falling to the bottom of that ravine, and feeling the heat of the flames on the back of my neck when the car exploded. But when I came too everyone was looking at me as though they expected me to pull a gun on them."

Adam sighed, he certainly remembered that, but truthfully he wasn't surprised by it. Unlike his friend, he remembered the whole event in question; the figure of Captain Scarlet standing on that girder with a gun in his hand, the World President with a cut to his lip behind him, hanging on for dear life and looking frightened and scared for his life, desperate to escape.

The scariest thing for Adam was the memory of his friend's blank-eyed stare, which he had learnt was common to all Mysteron agents. But he hadn't been surprised by everyone's reaction to the aftermath. Captain Blue had only just managed to fight off Captain Scarlet, and the shot had made him fall a long way down, but his amazing recovery had taken them all by surprise.

No other Mysteron agent had recovered in the same way, and Blue had the feeling that at the time the Mysterons were still coming to grips with human bodies. Now, none of their agents returned to normal, nor were they indestructible. Captain Scarlet was unique.

"When Doctor Fawn put me through that battery of tests and told me honestly about what had happened, I couldn't believe it. But as he went on, he scared me," he admitted.

"Scared you?" Adam repeated in surprise. In all the time he had known Captain Scarlet, he had known that Adam had been a combat soldier, and a good one as well, but he had never heard the man admit anything about being frightened.

"How would you feel if you suddenly woke up from what you thought was a conventional car crash, only to be told you'd become a virtual zombie or robot programmed to carry out a task, destroying anything and anybody in the way, and kidnapping the World President and taking him up the London Car-Vu only to recover and be discovered to be indestructible?" Paul's voice was quiet, and the haunted look in his eyes as he obviously tried to remember what had happened even though all his attempts at doing so in the past had not worked.

Adam couldn't reply to the question, but he didn't have the chance of actually coming up with a decent response because Paul began to speak again.

"I couldn't cope with it, Adam, that's why I became almost suicidal when the DT-19 went after the plane carrying the Director General of the United Asian Republic," he admitted, "I was still coming to terms with being indestructible, and I wanted to have a chance to redeem myself for what had happened with the World President even if I couldn't remember anything definite about it."

"I don't understand," Adam said.

"I was trying to see if I was really indestructible. I still couldn't take it in, I didn't like the idea of taking bullets or injuries where you could either be paralysed for life and going through that pain, only to recover a few hours later."

Suddenly the penny dropped for Adam. "You hate being indestructible, don't you?"

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Please review and follow.

Cheers.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't own Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

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The Truth of being Indestructible.

"Does it surprise you?" Captain Scarlet asked after a moment contemplating how best to respond to his best friend's question for a moment in silence before simply deciding to answer it with another question. "You know, it's ironic. I was a combat soldier for the World Army Air Force, essentially a killing machine. All that was needed to make me and others like me was to make me impervious to death. Indestructible."

Blue flinched at the cold way he said that last word. He had never heard such bitterness in his friend's voice, ever.

"The first time it happened when I was no longer a Mysteron," Scarlet said after a moment of reflecting, "I felt a terrific pain in my head. But I came back. After that, it never seemed to end. Dr Fawn explained to me using a bullet as an example, it would make me bleed and I'd feel the pain and a few hours later even a fatal wound would heal completely."

"Hopefully the war will be over," he suggested, though as the words passed through his mouth he realised they were poorly chosen, he wanted to try and be optimistic. "Later on the Mysterons might decide that its a waste?"

"We tried before, remember? With the pulsator, we'd taken from the complex on the Moon?" Paul reminded him. "They didn't believe us; if they choose to contact us then it's likely we might lay a trap for them, or they might kill whoever we send to meet with them."

Adam looked away when he realised his friend had a point. He remembered how everyone had crossed their fingers when they had hoped the attempt to communicate with the Mysterons, and he remembered how he had argued with Colonel White about sending someone unarmed without any communications equipment to a remote place. Blue remembered the uncertainty in the colonel's eyes, but he had made up his mind while Paul had made up his; it was logical to send Captain Scarlet to begin the negotiations, but it had ended up in disaster. The Mysterons had poured so much energy into the pulsator at the shack Paul had described, and it had exploded. The Mysterons had at the time turned their attention towards Cloudbase and had planned to destroy it, but no-one knew how exactly they planned to do it until Captain Scarlet had seen the pulsator glow so brightly that it exploded.

Everyone was lucky on that occasion, but the hope that the war would be finally over and no-one else might die due to a decision from someone tense and alert had virtually died out as well.

"You asked me if I hate being indestructible, Adam," Paul went on, smoothly pushing the matter along. "I do hate it, I hate it because I'm always uncertain about what will happen each time I…..die," he trailed off for a moment as he tried to find the right word to describe what happened to him, though it was obvious he was talking about death. "I hate it because I hate the fact so many people have died and yet I'm alive, and they aren't. Worse, do you remember when that cadet Machin accursed me of being the traitor after those hovercraft had been destroyed?"

Adam nodded slowly, remembering the case in question where a series of hovercraft destructions and how the latest Mysteron threat taunted them that there was a traitor in Spectrum, all the time he was left wondering where Scarlet was going this time, and he just hoped that he didn't say he had thought he was a traitor at first before he had grabbed that instrument recorder when their own hovercraft began its journey to becoming another wreck.

Paul sighed. "When he accused me when he started that fire…. I wondered if others felt the same way."

"Don't say that! Machin jumped to conclusions; there were dozens of people involved in the construction of the hovercraft, even his camp commander could have been the traitor," Adam said fiercely, "before you grabbed the instrument recorder and we found out it was a valve that the Mysterons adjusted."

"I know," Captain Scarlet responded with a sigh. "But I couldn't get it out of my mind. I couldn't help but ask myself how many others saw me with suspicion; why shouldn't they? I'd died, came back, took the World President hostage and threatened to kill him, and then I was killed again and then I wake up and hear a fantastic story where something that looked like me had taken the World President hostage….and then I learn I'm indestructible. What if….what if Machin had a point, that the Mysterons could somehow retake control of me and cause me to spy and sabotage Spectrum operations?"

Adam was beginning to feel more and more scared, he had never heard his friend speak this way before, but he could tell that it had been on his mind in a while. He thought back to those days they had spent at Koala base in Australia where the Mysteron's scheme to sow distrust by making everyone in Spectrum think there was a traitor when in fact it was actually a ruse. It was a neat enough plan; create enough chaos and let Spectrum tear itself apart by having everyone point fingers and make accusations, which would lead to witch hunts while the Mysterons only needed to affect the molecular structure of machine parts which were essential in the running of a car, an SPV or an interceptor while all the time everyone would become paranoid and they would take the law into their own hands.

But that had already happened, Adam realised. Everyone had suspected each other at Koala base, and even he and Paul had begun to suspect Major Stone after Machin started that fire (Adam knew that the little bastard had started it, but there had been no proof and Machin hadn't said a word, as if he were ashamed), but he had never expected Paul to come out with something like this.

"If they could have done, they probably would have done it by now," Adam said evenly while he tried desperately to keep his voice as level as he could, "but how could you think that?"

Paul sighed. "I got thinking about it shortly after the case," he admitted, "I was surprised when Machin confronted me like that in the hovercraft, but I could see the terror on his face. He genuinely thought I was the traitor all because of what the Mysterons did to me. It got me thinking; what if the Mysterons could somehow retake control?"

Adam couldn't speak as his mind conjured up an image of his friend going around Cloudbase shooting everyone without any mercy or compassion. In his mind, Adam could see Paul killing everyone one of his friends - he shuddered when he pictured the Angels being murdered while Paul was under the Mysteron influence, but the most terrifying thing would be his face. Adam had shot Paul during the first days of the Mysteron-Spectrum war, and the blank look on his face was one that had given him nightmares for weeks.

"But that's not all, what if what's happened to me is not permanent?" Paul's question brought him out of his stupor and made him concentrate on the conversation again.

"What?"

Paul sighed. "What if my indestructibility isn't permanent?" he repeated. "Look, we know that the Mysterons can reverse matter and teleport, but what if they had needed to create some kind of bridge between Earth and Mars that allows them to remotely kill their human victims and reconstruct them from there?"

Adam realised where this was going. No-one really knew how the Mysterons were able to reconstruct their victims and make them into a weapon to be used against the targets the Mysterons selected, but there were theories about how they did it. The theory Captain Scarlet had just given was not an uncommon belief, the Mysterons had some sort of connection rigged between Mars and Earth like a telephone cable and they used it to kill and reconstruct their victims. But it made no sense; if the Mysterons could manipulate the structure of matter to the degree they knew of already, surely they would have tried to retake control of Captain Scarlet, and for that matter why didn't they just reanimate the reconstructions of their victims? Why didn't they cause even more damage, or maybe they couldn't do it or they had thought about it but found it was impossible? Adam didn't know but he only hoped that the Mysterons remained comfortable with their current methods.

Captain Scarlet read the look on his friend's face. "I know it's just a theory, but you've got to admit it's a point," he said, "that's one of the reasons I wanted to go to Crater 101 to destroy that complex."

Adam was surprised by the admission. "What? What do you mean, you wanted to go to Crater 101?"

"I wanted to get a better understanding of Mysteron technology," Paul replied, "and to find out if there is a cure to being indestructible. I've asked Doctor Fawn about it under doctor-patient confidentiality, though Colonel White knows about my feelings about being indestructible. One of my greatest worries is the Mysterons will one day affect it, and the next time I'm either shot, crushed, or stabbed, or cooked in my own body I will die and never wake up.

"I went to the moon to learn what I could about the Mysterons and their technology, but we were strapped for time and thanks to the Mysterons using Fraiser to plant that bomb for a couple of hours too early-,"

"We couldn't find what we needed," Adam finished with a nod as he began to understand what his friend's issues were.

He was afraid of what would happen in the long term, and with that revelation about his inner fears of what the Mysterons could do he had a right to be, and Adam once more conjured an image of Captain Scarlet once more held under Mysteron control and killing everyone he met. It was likely Paul had thought the same dreadful thoughts over time.

Adam remembered the briefing before their second trip to the Moon, how Paul had made that stupid crack about him and Lieutenant Green not being able to handle the trip without him… but now he realised he had done it because he had wanted to learn more about the Mysterons before they had a chance to take control again.

Deep down Captain Scarlet was frightened that his indestructibility was not permanent and that the Mysterons could retake control.

"Paul," Adam said hesitantly, "I don't know much about what happened to you, no-one does, but if I can I'll help you find the answers you want."

For the first time, Paul smiled in gratitude. "Thanks, Adam, " he said before he looked around and his smile faded. "Let's get back on the search," he suggested.

0000000000000000

Captain Blue and Captain Scarlet were seated around the conference room table while Colonel White addressed the meeting. "The last few days and nights have been a strain, but we are going to have to continue," the colonel was saying before he sighed wearily. "I have received reports of a number of cases of sabotage, and while I agree with the majority of you that Mysteron activity is unlikely we have to remain vigilant."

"I wonder what the Mysterons are doing on Mars," Captain Scarlet commented.

"Who knows?" Colonel White shrugged his shoulders. "They have played this game with us before, don't forget."

Everyone remembered how the Mysterons had played this game before, but they had begun to lose interest in guessing what the unseen aliens were up to.

"I'll take your reports now," White said, holding out his hand like a schoolteacher asking for a class's homework to grade, and everyone handed him their reports before he dismissed then.

When they were outside, Captain Scarlet looked at his friend. "I'm heading to the gym, we can practice fencing?" he suggested.

"Good idea, I could do with some exercise."

As they both headed for the gymnasium, Captain Blue wondered when they would encounter the Mysterons again. But they would cross that bridge when they came to it.


End file.
